I'm fairly new to Linux and thus Puppy (using Slacko 5.3 on an HP t5000 thin client booting from flash drive for a month or so now) but 'enjoying' the challenge.

My problem is that I can't get Seamonkey to start, this applies to the browser and the email client. I don't know which version of Seamonkey came with the OS as it won't open a window at all and I don't know how to find out otherwise.

Anyway, when I look in Htop it shows 2 or 3 lines of Seamonkey processes, sometimes more, but it will not start up at all.

The only effect it has is the OS becomes bogged down and the only way to get out of it is to kill Seamonkey or restart X.

I've downloaded Dillo and I'm using that, although Google doesn't seem to work properly there, but that will be for another time. I tried downloading Opera but it crashed my system at the end of the download and it didn't install.

I have also downloaded the Change Default default browser utility to set Dillo as my default at this time.

This has happened with both my successful installs, could it be something with the LiveCD burn?? Can anyone tell me what might be happening, or not happening, with Seamonkey? Thanks heaps in anticipation. Also, what other info do you need to know in order to help? thanks again.

PS I've just realised that the 'Help' uses Seamonkey to view the help system and so I can't get any help that way. So all you good people are my help for now, thanks.

Do you remember if you had Seamonkey, at any point, try to update itself (either manually or automatically)? Or did it never work?

You can try starting the same version of Puppy in LiveCD mode (RAM-only), and see if Seamonkey will start, then.

Also, with all of the Seamonkey processes closed, find Seamonkey's .desktop file, and view it as a text file, making note of what command it's using to start Seamonkey. Open a terminal/console window, and use that command. Does it list any errors when you try to start it?_________________[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install | 1GB RAM | 1.3GB swap ] * [ Puppy Precise 5.7.1 JP, Frugal install ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

Hey, thanks heaps, David and Makoto, for your responses, I'll try these suggestions as soon as I can.

But just to update on some of the requested info, the live CD is one that my brother burned for me, I was not able to get my .iso to burn properly, i.e. I could burn it but it would not complete the boot but his would. Thus, I have not done a checksum on it, still don't know much about that sort of thing.

The Slacko splash screen says 5.3 (no other dots) and as far as I can remember, there has been no attempt to update automatically and I haven't initiated any update, don't know how yet.

Right from the start, Seamonkey would not start, except as described. I haven't tried booting from the liveCd to see if it works from there but I will. Also, as far as I know, Seamonkey has not tried to update and I haven't initiated an update for it.

I'm starting to find my way around the system so I'll look for the files you both have mentioned to see what is in them and I'll get back to you.

opening a console and typing seamonkey gives me a blinking cursor and a slow/unresponsive system, no errors or other output. Htop shows the same as previously described.

usr/bin shows a seamonkey symlink and I get the same result as before but seems to be a little less slow??

usr/share/applications reveals 4 .desktop files for seamonkey, clicking gives the same result as before. I tried 2 and Htop shows a mozaddressbook line as well as the seamonkey lines for the address book file.

Yes, Dillo is now set as my default browser, and mozmail for default mail client.

The .desktop file shows:- Exec=seamonkey
and Terminal=false (not sure if that is of any significance??)
See above for how the console command went.

Booting from the live CD and starting seamonkey gives me lots & lots & lots of disk activity and a much less responsive system, to the point I had to do a hard shutdown to get out of it.

I hope this answers all your queries with regard to what is happening, etc. Now I guess the next question is, how do I do a checksum on the CD/.iso file? And, do I need to start again from scratch?

Anyway, thanks again for your help and hope that you are able to advise further, bless you guys.

Your findings that the expected seamonkey files are in place but nothing makes it run for you, seems to me like a problem in the iso download or the CD burn has corrupted seamonkey.

It could be a bad burn with just a seamonkey file affected. You could simply try a new CD burn and see what happens. If the same problem occurs, then the iso is more likely the culprit.

If while in Puppy, you can locate with Rox the original slacko iso, you could check its md5sum (do a checksum) from a "console" or "terminal" -- if you can also find out what the slacko iso md5sum was supposed to be.

Unfortunately slacko doesn't seem to include a graphical user interface version of the md5sum program (well, I can't find one in the FAT version of slacko-5.3.3 which I'm trying at the moment). These helpful little programs are usually in the 'Utilities' or 'Files' section of the menu.

If you click on the monitor icon in Puppy, this opens a console window. It opens by default in the /root directory.
Then you need to change or move the console to the directory that has the iso. This is done by typing in

cd /yyy/xxxxx

(cd = change directory and then input the path (replace "/yyy/xxxx" with actual directories displayed across the top of the Rox window) to where you want to be; then type:

ls

and hit <Enter> to list the programs of the directory you're in as a check on things.

Once you see the iso listed as being in the directory you're at using the list command (ie 'ls') then type:

md5sum slacko-5.3.1.iso

(type the full name of the iso - I'm hoping it's about right in my example)

and hit <Enter>. The checksum will appear as an alphanumeric string. See if it is the same as the listed string from the iso download site (could be given as a separate .txt file - you could use Dillo to get this .txt file)

If you did the original download from Windows and the slacko iso is still on the Windows machine, then you (or Google) could find a free-ware Windows program that calculates the md5sum. Run that to check the iso from within Windows.

Or if you've got the NBN , just do another download of the slacko iso. I have downloaded most of the slacko versions since 2011 and Seamonkey has always run without problem, so "it can be done" .

Don't despair.. as I understand you have no HDD (thin client) and a usb install.. well .. and this probably isn't great advice, but you could try to make a swap partition on your usb, but perhaps puppy already automatically made a swap file, you can check by running "free" from a terminal, or checking the files on the root of the stick.

Maybe you could use another stick as a swap partition, you would have to format the stick as Linux swap from Gparted and it would be "sacrificial" in that many writes to flash media wears them out. (Swap is like the windows "page file", when RAM gets full it uses the system drive to swap what is not being used at that particular time).

I agree with 01micko that lack of RAM is the cause of your problem. Puppy needs at least 256 MB of RAM, or RAM plus virtual memory (swap), to run as you are doing. If you can't put more RAM in the computer, you can add some swap memory, either a swap partition or a swap file.
Using a USB flash drive for swap memory is perfectly acceptable. As far as I know, no one has "worn out" a flash drive yet by using it for swap memory. According to Wikipedia, a Flash memory location has a lifetime of 100,000 to a million erase/write cycles, and it wears out gradually, not suddenly, like a hard disk drive. Flash memory controllers are designed to spread out writing so that no one memory location gets much more use than another (load leveling). The result is that a USB Flash drive lasts nearly forever when used as swap memory.

Thanks, Mick and Flash, I began to suspect that memory might be the issue and you guys have just confirmed that, thanks heaps.

I'm not sure about putting more ram in the machine but I'll certainly look into that option. My son-in-law has taken his thin client apart and installed a laptop HD into his machine, so I'm sure more memory shouldn't be a problem.

Of course, I was drawn to Puppy for its small footprint and ability to run on older, small spec machines and from flashdrive, too. But, I guess there are compromises along the way.

I haven't set up a swap file/partition yet but that will be the next course of action. I have my install on a 4Gb USB stick with 512mb of personal file space so space shouldn't be a problem I wouldn't think.

Anyway, thanks again all you wonderful puppy lovers for your assistance, I'll get back to you on my progress, cheers.

Actually, Puppy 4 and earlier tend to be less demanding on the hardware than any or most of the Puppy 5 versions, I believe. You can see from my sig the Puppy setup I was running (the tower stopped working, but I'm getting a newer Puppy 4.3.1 tower up and working... ) It ran fairly decent for ~Y2K-era hardware.
Granted, I wasn't using it for viewing YouTube videos (or even playing videos in general ), and it could certainly have used more RAM and HD space... but for everything else, it was a decent system._________________[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install | 1GB RAM | 1.3GB swap ] * [ Puppy Precise 5.7.1 JP, Frugal install ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

Makoto, thanks for the info, I've downloaded 4.3.1 but haven't had a chance to fire it up yet.

I've discovered that the thin client I have has fixed ram, 128M, and no chance of upgrade, besides major surgery?? The other option I've considered is stripping 5.3 down to apps I can use. That shouldn't be a problem as Seamonkey is the only one so far that seems to be unable to start. But then I haven't used all the apps on the system yet. Although I have tried most of them...

Well, I've fired up pup 4.3.1 and it boots fine from the live CD and Seamonkey actually starts. Seamonkey version is 1.1.18, still not sure what version comes with 5.3, maybe one of you people might know.

On that, I was wondering if it was worth taking the current version out of 5.3 and installing the/an earlier version, like 1.1.18??

Thanks all, for your help and I'll keep you posted, if your interested.

Cheers, Ray

Just by the way, the desktop of 4.3.1 has some strange 'artefacts', the mouse pointer starts out as a big square block of coloured pixels and there is a line of dots on the upper left side of the screen. I did the md5sum on the .iso and it was correct and it seems to run fine, any ideas?

for those who might be wondering how I fared with a browser to replace Seamonkey, I have installed Firefox Namoroka (alongside Dillo).

ravenxau said "try puppy 2.16 - i have it running fine with only 64MB of ram and a swap file"
I did try 2.16 but can't remember now how it went, it obviously didn't go as well as I would have liked as I'm not using it. I probably couldn't get it on the internet??

Namoroka starts up alright and seems to run reasonably well if a little slowly. At least I can use Google without any trouble.

I did try Opera but it was too slow and jammed up the system, even with a good-sized swapfile. I also tried Netsurf but it was just bad, all the text was overlapping on every page, didn't matter whether it was a webpage or a page of Google search results, I couldn't find out how to fix it so just dumped it.

Anyway, just thought you might be interested. BTW, I'm sticking with Slacko 5.3.x for now, it's the one that seems to work for me, mostly.

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